I'm not one that's ashamed of looking at anything I'm interested in. When it came time for the folks from the afternoon local, I sat down in my parlor behind the Nottinghams. I saw she never came out to the gate. And when he came home I could see her white dress out in the back garden where she was pretending to work.
He sat down on the front porch and smoked, and seemed to read the paper. She came in the house after a while, and finally she appeared in the front door for three-fourths of a second.
"Your supper's ready for you," I heard her say. And then I knew, certain sure, how they were both sitting there at their table not speaking a word.
I ate my own supper, and I felt like a funeral was going on. It kills something in me to have young folks, or any folks, act like that. And when I went back in the parlor I saw him on the front porch again, smoking, and her on the side porch playing with the kitten.
"It's the first death," I says. "It's their first kind of death. And I can't stand it a minute longer."
So when I saw him start out pretty soon to go downtown alone—I went to my front gate and I called to him to come over. He came—a fine, close-knit chap he was, with the young not rubbed out of his face yet, and his eyes window-clear.
"The catch on my closet-door don't act right," I says. "I wonder if you'll fix it for me?"
He went up and done it, and I ran for the tools for him and tried to get my courage up. When he got through and came down I was sitting on my hall-tree.
"Mr. Groom," I says—that was my name for him—"I hope you won't think I'm interfering too much, but I want to speak to you serious about your wife."